Closing – Transatlantic Bridges: Corrado Cagli, 1938-1948

By Center for Italian Modern Art

Jan 27  |  Culture

Closing Exhibition – Transatlantic Bridges: Corrado Cagli, 1938-1948

JANUARY 27, 2024

CIMA’s Fall-Winter 2023-24 exhibition will be dedicated to Italian Jewish artist Corrado Cagli (1910-1976) and focus on the human and intellectual trajectory of the years he spent in the United States, between 1938 and 1948.

During the 1930s, Cagli was active as a painter working on public projects commissioned by the Italian fascist regime, including the 1937 Paris Expo, for which his paintings were part of an official government-sanctioned pavilion. It was only after 1937 that Cagli faced the full force of the regime as the number of critics and fascist party intellectuals attacking his work and persona grew.

As a Jewish and openly gay artist, starting in 1937, Cagli became the target of antisemitic attacks from reactionary critics within the fascist regime. As Italy promulgated its racial laws in 1938, Cagli left the country for the United States, where he became a protagonist of the New York émigré artistic scene. He was very close to the Neo-romantic milieu revolving around the Julian Levy Gallery and the Wadsworth Atheneum; he was active in the environment of anti-Breton surrealists of View magazine; and participated in a foundational moment of gay culture in New York together with other artists working for the Ballet Society and Harper’s Bazaar and exhibiting at Alexander Iolas’s gallery.